One widely used method of developing business, such as in the auto sales industry, is by calling current or prospective customers with the aim of enticing the customer to visit an auto dealership for a purpose. The purpose may be to sell the customer a vehicle or an accessory for the vehicle, or to perform maintenance on the customer's vehicle, such as a safety recall.
To that end, some auto dealerships employ call centers to contact such current or prospective customers, to make them aware of current promotions or incentives offered by the dealership, or to offer information about new vehicles for sale, for example. While the use of call centers has been proven to be effective, the efficiency of those call centers can be poor. For example, agents (those placing the calls) may spend a large amount of time between calls preparing for the calls, agents may not have the proper information available to them during a call to enable a favorable outcome, or the contacts called by the agent may be inappropriate.
To maximize the business development potential of call centers, it is important for each agent to spend as much time on the phone actually contacting, or attempting to contact, current or prospective customers. Thus, an effective contact management system should help reduce the time between calls, and should also help ensure that the contacts called are appropriate for a given calling campaign. Present contact management systems are not effective in accomplishing these aims, thus the development of new contact management system is needed.